A now-extinct village in northern Syria is probably going the earliest example of a community of people that were not directly hit and destroyed by a big comet that struck Earth roughly 12,800 years ago. The comet strike spurred a dramatic shift in lifestyle from hunting to agriculture and even control of untamed animals, in keeping with a brand new evaluation of stays excavated from the region back within the ’70s.
“Based on current analyses, this could be the earliest example of a human settlement catastrophically affected by a cosmic impact event,” researchers write in the brand new study.
The team’s latest interpretation of excavated material from the prehistoric village Abu Hureyra, which is now submerged beneath the reservoir Lake Assad in northern Syria also points to a drastic change in local climate across the time Earth collided with shards of the 62-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) disintegrating icy body called a Centaur. These objects sport a dual nature in that they give the impression of being like asteroids but leave a tail of gas and mud of their wake like comets.
Related: Did a comet strike 13,000 years ago change human civilization as we understand it?
In what’s generally known as an airburst, certainly one of the comet’s pieces full of immense heat is believed to have exploded high up within the planet’s atmosphere and showered intense shockwaves over the village, thus wiping out its settlers. Scientists also suspect the event, called the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, blanketed the region with dust, blocking out sunlight and triggering a cold winter.
Before the comet strike, the record shows the settlers dominantly consumed wild fruits, berries and legumes while post-event stays show their food plan had shifted to grains and lentils, a results of early experimentation in cultivation.
The region also saw a spike in drought-resistant crops, reflecting a change from cool climate to a much drier one, in keeping with the brand new study. “The villagers began to cultivate barley, wheat and legumes,” James Kennett, a professor emeritus at University of California Santa Barbara and a co-author of the brand new study, said in a statement. “That is what the evidence clearly shows.”
These findings are consistent with the 2007 hypothesis that our planet witnessed several such comet airbursts across continents. Parts of the large comet that burst over the Syrian village also showered upon over 50 known locations across at the least five continents, researchers say.
Since the comet’s “impact” was indirect and really an explosion within the air, there are not any craters in the bottom, researchers say. “But a crater will not be required,” Kennett said in the identical statement.
“Many accepted impacts haven’t any visible crater.”
This research is described in a paper published Sept. 28 within the journal Airbursts and Cratering Impacts.